MEMO to the good ol' boys of Augusta National:

the US Open is usually played in June, not in early April and, just for the record, one US Open per season is quite enough thanks.

They call 1968, when Roberto De Vicenzo signed for the wrong score and Bob Goalby was declared the winner, the Lost Masters. A week after Zach Johnson was presented with his green jacket, the search for the 2007 Masters continues.

Apologists for a tournament which on this occasion was more a bagatelle than a major championship will no doubt find some justification in the freakishly unseasonal weather. When Canada's Mike Weir - born Ontario, educated in Salt Lake City, and an inveterate skier - is rummaging through one of the local malls for some thermal underwear, you get the gist of just how cold it was.

Cold, and for the first time since the course was lengthened, the rough grown and hundreds of pine trees added, bone dry. The organisers had a choice. They could soften the course up with water and keep attacking golf on the agenda or, as the breeze freshened, they could let their creation loose on an unsuspecting field. In the end, the temptation was obviously too great.

By the time they saw sense and doused the parched greens before Sunday's final round, it was too late. The damage had been done. With the scoring average ballooning to over 77 on the Saturday, and with the freezing spectators wondering if they were ever going to applaud a birdie again, the Masters was now worshipping at the US Open altar of par.

The last pairing of the day, which by right would dominate the television coverage, wound up being humiliated.

Brett Wetterich's 83 could have been explained away by inexperience, but Tim Clark, who could only manage an 80, had been last year's runner-up behind Phil Mickelson.

While Lee Westwood and Henrik Stenson were the only high-profile complainants during the week, Davis Love later suggested that the "fun and the scoring" had been removed from the course. "It's gotten to be Retief Goosen kind of golf: make a lot of pars and you can win."

As for the trademark roars which intermittently echo through the pine trees, Augusta's traditional acoustics were replaced for the most part by the sound of silence. The 1979 champion, Fuzzy Zoeller, who somehow made the cut at the age of 55, said the atmosphere was like that of a "morgue".

As defensive play was rewarded, and the spectacle diminished, it was no coincidence that Johnson's winning total of 289 was the highest in a major championship since Paul Lawrie's 290 amid the chaos of Carnoustie. As at that controversial British Open eight years ago, the men of the Masters got the winner they deserved.

The US Open is about persistence, patience and, above all, about par. The British Open is about the creative challenge of a links, and about coping with the elements. The USPGA Championship is? well no one knows for sure quite what the USPGA represents, but it's usually played on a demanding course, and it's nearly always hot and sweaty.

Before this year anyway, the Masters was about deciding when to attack and when to defend on the ultimate riskreward course. The player who attacked incessantly would be severely punished, just as the player who defended throughout would never have a chance to win.

The Masters was about eagles and double-bogeys, about someone shooting 30 on the back nine on Sunday and charging up the leaderboard. An American professional called Jerry McGee once said that playing in the US Open was "like tiptoeing through hell". The Masters was like tiptoeing through heaven.

Then along came Zach Johnson. In the grim swirl that was last Sunday, when as many as five different players held the lead, Johnson came to the par-five 13th hole where, after yet another accurate drive, he found himself with 213 yards to the green. Admittedly, any shot with a major title on the line is a pressure shot, but a carry of 213 yards is not a problem for even a modest tournament professional.

But Johnson laid up, because it was his game plan, and because this was the Masters masquerading as the US Open. When a player who has a chance to win one of golf 's most prestigious championships lays up from 213 yards, you know something is wrong.

Johnson performed admirably. He duly birdied the 13th, the 14th as well with the sort of putt that Woods so badly needed, and then he was on target again at the short 16th. With the world numberone breathing down his neck, he kept his nerve.

If Woods, who lost a major for the first time after holding the lead on the final day, struggled from breaking a club at the 11th, to the epiphany of an eagle at the 13th, to the water at the 15th, there was a sense for a long time that he would still find a way to win. "It was a little bit frustrating in the sense that I just made a couple of mistakes out there, " he said.

However, the seeds of his downfall had been sown in rounds one and three when he bogeyed the two finishing holes on both occasions.

"That's where I threw this tournament away, " he added.

Mickelson, meanwhile, never had it to throw away.

The week had started with further emphasis on the intensity of his preparations, and it ended amid rumours that he might be parting company with his long-time coach Rick Smith and joining forces with Butch Harmon.

Whereas last year, the twodriver tactic had worked to perfection, this time Mickelson almost missed as many fairways as Seve Ballesteros.

Yet at the end of three rounds, he was amazingly still only four strokes behind the leader, Stuart Appleby. That said all that needed to be said about a tricked-up course that blurred the lines between good and bad golf.

For P�draig Harrington, there was nothing approaching the disappointment of last year's US Open. At one stage last Sunday, after a birdie at the impossibly difficult 12th hole, and an eagle at the 13th, he was only two adrift of Johnson. The end effectively came at the 15th where, for the third time in the week, he found the water but for a self-confessed slow-learner, the lessons of Augusta are beginning to sink in.

In contention once more, the overwhelming sense now is that Harrington has the selfbelief, the experience and game to pick off a major title.

Much was made in the aftermath of how the Ryder Cup had contributed to Johnson's new-found confidence. On the second-day fourballs at the K Club, his seven birdies were the key as he and Scott Verplank defeated Henrik Stenson and Harrington. "He left the Ryder Cup a different player, " said his coach Mike Bender.

However, the point was also made that being one of America's better Ryder Cup players was tantamount to being one of the better lifeboat captains on the Titanic. The Masters now needs to be restored to its former glory, weather or no weather. When Johnson appeared last week on the David Letterman Show, he was a given a number of lines to read, one of which was: "I've never even heard of me".

If he took the gag in the right spirit, the real joke was on Augusta National and its travesty of a major.